Embodiments of the present invention generally relate to identifying one or more relevant social communities for one or more questions. More particularly, embodiments relate to determining a question-community affinity value between one or more questions and each of a plurality of candidate social communities to identify one or more relevant social communities for the one or more questions.
A question may be answered by implementing mechanisms that detect whether a relationship does or does not exist between a user and the question or between the user and a group. For example, mechanisms that search for a user related to the subject matter of the question may only require detecting the existence of a relationship between the user and the question, and may lack an evaluation of an affinity strength (e.g., between the question and the user, etc.). Mechanisms that search for, or post to, a forum community and/or an affinity group may only require detecting the existence of related users (e.g., members, friends, etc.), and may lack an evaluation of an affinity strength (e.g., between the user and the community, etc.). Mechanisms that notify a subject matter expert (SME) about the question may be based on identification as an expert, and may lack an evaluation of an affinity strength (e.g., between the question and the forum community, etc.). Mechanisms that return a search result to a requestor with a link may route the requestor, and not the search query, to other users via the link. Accordingly, inefficiencies may arise to identify relevant communities for one or more questions and/or to provide one or more responses to the one or more questions.